Honors and Accolades

New College produces some mighty results.

If you don’t mind, we need to brag a bit – because for a tiny school, New College produces some mighty results.

If you don’t mind, we need to brag a bit – because for a tiny school, New College produces some mighty results.

Year after year, we consistently attract the attention of the most prestigious arbiters of excellence in higher education, resulting in top national rankings from the likes of U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Kiplinger’s and The Princeton Review. We try not to put too much emphasis on these rankings, which are subject to a lot of variables, but it’s very nice when we make the top tier.

National Rankings

New College was once again named a Forbes Best Value College for 2019, schools ranked to “help students and their families evaluate the likely return on their investment.” Forbes used a number of criteria to produce their list, including net price (tuition, fees, and room and board), average federal debt load per student, the number of Pell grant recipients, and alumni earnings.

Learn.org has named New College No. 40 in its 2019 rankings for the top 50 public universities in the country. Learn.org observes that New College is “known for its ‘choosiness’ — the average GPA of its incoming students is 4.03! The school … boasts a list-best faculty-to-student ratio of 10:1, which gives students the one-on-one attention they need to truly explore the curriculum.”

Washington Monthly has recognized New College in its 2019 Liberal Arts Rankings. New College came in at 53 out of more than 200 colleges listed and No. 3 among public colleges. Since 2005, the Washington Monthly has ranked colleges based on what they do for the country, ranking liberal arts colleges—four-year institutions that award almost exclusively bachelor’s degrees and that focus on arts and sciences rather than professional programs—based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility, research, and promoting public service.

For the 16th consecutive year, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has recognized New College of Florida as one of the nation’s best values in higher education. The magazine ranked New College 23rd on its list of the 100 best values in public colleges for 2019. Kiplinger says the colleges in its rankings “best meet our definition of value: a quality education at an affordable price.”

New College was named a Forbes Best Value College for 2019, an exclusive class of only 300 ranked schools. Forbes used a number of criteria to produce their list, including net price (tuition, fees, and room and board), average federal debt load per student, the number of Pell grant recipients, and alumni earnings.

New College of Florida is one of the nation’s 200 “Colleges That Pay You Back,” according to the 2018 edition of a book released by The Princeton Review. The book is an unranked assessment that reflects academic quality, cost to students and families, and salaries earned by graduates. New College scored well on all fronts, with 90 points of a possible 99 on the Review’s “return on investment” grade. The Review cited New College graduates’ median starting salary of $43,700 and mid-career median salary of $88,800 for students with a bachelor’s or higher degree. More than 80 percent of New College graduates go on to a master’s or doctoral degree.

New College of Florida has been ranked No. 2 in the state in LendEDU’s fourth annual College Risk-Reward Indicator study(2019). LendEDU has defined the risk of attending a respective four-year college or university as the average student loan debt per graduate at that institution. The reward of attending that same college or university is the average early career pay for graduates of that respective school. Average early career pay for graduates can also be defined as the median salary for alumni with 0-5 years of work experience.

New College was among the 15 percent of American colleges to make the Princeton Review’s new college guidebook, “The Best 382 Colleges” (2018). The book is based on surveys and interviews with students and administrators at several hundred four-year colleges. “We chose New College for this book because it offers outstanding academics,” said Robert Franek, the Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief and author of “The Best 382 Colleges.”New College was rated as one of The Princeton Review’s “Best Value Colleges” in 2019. The publication ranks the nation’s top 200 schools that offer outstanding academics, great career preparation, and low cost. The Princeton Review also named New College to its list of “50 Colleges That Create Futures”. The 50 schools were selected from more than 3,000 nationwide, and New College was one of two Florida schools to be selected.

2018 Student Honors and Accolades

Fulbright Awards

Miles Iton, of Homestead, Florida, received a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Taiwan. Megan Bailey of Miramar, Florida, and Liliana Solomon of South Orange, New Jersey, received Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships, to Taiwan and Croatia, respectively. Third-year student Lorelei Domke is New College’s first recipient of a Freeman-ASIA award for study in China. The Freeman-ASIA program provides scholarships to American undergraduate students accepted to study abroad programs in China and Southeast Asia. Domke received the program’s maximum $5,000 award. She also received a $3,000 Gilman Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State to fund her studies.

Gilman Scholars

Kathleen Conopean, a third-year double major in classics and Spanish culture from Miami, Florida, was awarded a Gilman Scholarship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs for Spring 2018 study in Leon, Spain.

Summer Fellowships

Katrina Carlin, a third-year student majoring in chemistry, was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship by the National Institute of Standards and Technology for research at the Engineering Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland. This award is granted to outstanding undergrads who intend to pursue careers in science and engineering. One New College student has his research funded at a National Laboratory for summer 2018: Riley Lewis, a third year in Chemistry will do nanoscience research at Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Faculty Awards

When it comes to research grants, honors and awards, the New College faculty chalk up achievements out of proportion to a school our size. The students benefit, too, because they get to participate in the “real world learning” opportunities presented by the faculty’s research grants. Some recent examples include a $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Army to study nanotechnology, a $375,000 grant to explore how better maize production can feed the world’s hungry, and Fulbright Fellowships to New Zealand and Mexico.

The College’s community outreach programs have won awards from the NAACP, the YMCA, Sarasota County and Better World Books.

2018 Awards

Associate Professor of Biology Jayne Gardiner secured funding form the Mote Scientific Foundation to participate in Phase 3 of “Wiring the Bay”- Developing an Acoustic Sensing Network for Sarasota Bay and Surrounding Waters. Dr. Gardiner and New College students will perform summer 2018 acoustic telemetry to detect animal movements in and out of the Bay’s passes, along the coast and offshore.

Former Provost and Professor of Music Stephen Miles and Producer of New Music New College Ron Silver secured funding from the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County through the Tourist Development Cultural/Arts Program to support NMNC’s 2018-2019 season.

For the 15th consecutive year, Professor of Biology Sandra Gilchrist again led a very impressive PUSH/SUCCESS summer program for disadvantaged middle and high school students from Sarasota and Manatee counties with external financial support from The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program and Publix Supermarket Charities. Students in this 12- day June residential program completed activities studying the environment and health issues.